Page 67 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

History of English Literature

Notes 9.1 Neoclassicism

The works of Dryden, Pope, Swift, Addison and John Gay, as well as many of their contemporaries,
exhibit qualities of order, clarity, and stylistic decorum that were formulated in the major critical
documents of the age: Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), and Pope’s Essay on Criticism
(1711). These works, forming the basis for modern English literary criticism, insist that ‘nature’ is
the true model and standard of writing. This ‘nature’ of the Augustans, however, was not the wild,
spiritual nature the romantic poets would later idealize, but nature as derived from classical
theory: a rational and comprehensible moral order in the universe, demonstrating God’s
providential design. The literary circle around Pope considered Homer preeminent among ancient
poets in his descriptions of nature, and concluded in a circuitous feat of logic that the writer who
‘imitates’ Homer is also describing nature. From this follows the rules inductively based on the
classics that Pope articulated in his Essay on Criticism:
Those rules of old discovered, not devised,
Are nature still, but nature methodized.
Particularly influential in the literary scene of the early eighteenth century were the two periodical
publications by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Tatler (1709-11), and The Spectator (1711-
12). Both writers are ranked among the minor masters of English prose style and credited with
raising the general cultural level of the English middle classes. A typical representative of the
post-Restoration mood, Steele was a zealous crusader for morality, and his stated purpose in The
Tatler was “to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality.” With The Spectator,
Addison added a further purpose: to introduce the middle-class public to recent developments in
philosophy and literature and thus to educate their tastes. The essays are discussions of current
events, literature, and gossip often written in a highly ironic and refined style. Addison and Steele
helped to popularize the philosophy of John Locke and promote the literary reputation of John
Milton, among others. Although these publications each only ran two years, the influence that
Addison and Steele had on their contemporaries was enormous, and their essays often amounted
to a popularization of the ideas circulating among the intellectuals of the age. With these wide-
spread and influential publications, the literary circle revolving around Addison, Steele, Swift and
Pope was practically able to dictate the accepted taste in literature during the Augustan Age. In one
of his essays for The Spectator, for example, Addison criticized the metaphysical poets for their
ambiguity and lack of clear ideas, a critical stance which remained influential until the twentieth
century.
The literary criticism of these writers often sought its justification in classical precedents. In the
same vein, many of the important genres of this period were adaptations of classical forms: mock
epic, translation, and imitation. A large part of Pope’s work belongs to this last category, which
exemplifies the artificiality of neoclassicism more thoroughly than does any other literary form of
the period. In his satires and verse epistles Pope takes on the role of an English Horace, adopting
the Roman poet’s informal candor and conversational tone, and applying the standards of the
original Augustan Age to his own time, even addressing George II satirically as “Augustus.”

Did u know? Pope translated the Iliad and the Odyssey and after concluding this demanding
task, he embarked on The Dunciad (1728), a biting literary satire.
The Dunciad is a mock epic, a form of satiric writing in which commonplace subjects are described
in the elevated, heroic style of classical epic. By parody and deliberate misuse of heroic language
and literary convention, the satirist emphasizes the triviality of the subject, which is implicitly
being measured against the highest standards of human potential. Among the best-known mock
epic poems of this period in addition to The Dunciad are John Dryden’s MacFlecknoe (1682), and
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